Feed back and response

This week started with a feedback session from literally every tutor that walked in the room. Benefits me completely so I’m not complaining just need to make a note of suggestions.

First was Emma who gave me feedback on my Cerberus gateway structure in particular the rounded pillars which seemed out of place with my Victorian theme. The solid cylindrical shapes seemed more fitting with the roman age where the technology to taper large stone works inwards didn’t exsist. I gave to agree with her on that. It was suggested to me to make them more janky and intresting. Another asset that she noticed could use some improvement was the fountain. With just an albedo applied it really is vital that the texturing be dead on to suggest the material properties of the object. Currently it isnt reading as blue stone its reading as blue play block or something. So I needed to address that.

Next up was Mike and Craig who spotted a couple of issues with the Beelzebub Pub the most blaringly obvious is that the scratch marks are too square in the base. If a big beast had created these marks across the brick work then the claws would have left more a V shaped cavity in the wall rather than a boxy one. Also the texture on the inside shouldn’t be totally black and should have more hints of orange from the bricks but I don’t think I agree I like the darker colour for the cavity seems more comical. So I could add some more greys closer to the opening but Im reluctant to add orange in there.They also suggested changing the name from ‘ Beelzebub Pub’ to just ‘Beelzepub’ ……how did I miss that one its genius.

So most of this week was spent making those fixes first addressing the pillars of the Cerberus gateway. Going back to mood boards for that asset I decided to look for a different direction. In particular I really liked these more square pillars either side of the iron gate topped with a pyramid. Using this as inspiration I re-designed the pillars to look more like these blocking them in 3D and tweaking with the style before being happy to re-draw them on my concept. I have to say I much prefer these shapes to the cylindrical pillars. They seem to be so much more fun and playful. Happy with the style I decided to paint up a concept piece to match the others in my collection.

The Beelzepub adjustments really weren’t too difficult to fix I had them done in a day. What did concern me was the fountain and the textures. I couldn’t hand paint more detail into the texture it takes me long enough as it is. I wanted to experiment with PBR, which I had used in my previous style matrix project, to see whether adding roughness, normal and metalness maps could enhance my assets. Taking just the teeth section of my fountain I decided this would be the best part to test my PBR maps on as it has hard surface, fleshy parts and enamel material. Below is a quick shot of the result. It looks pretty good enhancing the materials where needed even making the gums look wet from saliva. I feel I need to add PBR texture tactics to all my models as it looks too good to ignore.

I know I was supposed to re-topo the dogs heads during this week but I felt these matters were more pressing also if I hadn’t persued this I might’ve continued just using diffuse textures when now I know PBR makes the assets so much better. I want to move on from Cerberus gateway during uni hours so I will continue to re-topo the skulls and make the gates at home.